I wasn’t at the table when it happened. I wasn’t in the studio at all. I’ve been sitting through pneumonia—sidelined, breath shallow, days slipping past the window like low clouds. My body insisted I stop. Not gently, but entirely.
And so I’ve been watching instead of making. Listening instead of doing. Letting the hours swell and recede without purpose. I’ve been living in the hush between actions—the strange, uncomfortable silence where clarity sometimes lives.
This is not the kind of return I imagined for Melmore Street. I thought I’d arrive with momentum, with vision. But instead I’m here—tender, winded, cracked open by the involuntary stillness of illness. And maybe that’s more honest. Maybe the first step back is always quieter than we plan.
And yet, something stirred. Not a grand idea. Not a breakthrough. Just a flicker of awareness. A phrase that came to me: “One fairy night.”
Those words from The Great Gatsby—Fitzgerald’s lush, aching phrase for the moment when everything glows, briefly, before it slips away. It reminds me of the nights I create without questioning—when time doesn’t matter and neither does the outcome. Just the act of being in it: the light, the texture, the shimmer of it all.
Those nights feel like fairy nights, too. Not glittering, but liminal. Not showy, but lit from within. And maybe that’s what I’m learning again, here on the edge of June: that it’s okay to begin not with fire, but with a flicker.
This post marks two returns:
First—to this blog, Melmore Street Studio, named after the street in Tiffin, Ohio where my grandparents lived. It’s where my grandfather, George Collar, first taught me to draw—at the breakfast nook table that now resides in my studio. This space will be a place for writing, memory, reflection, and the quiet art of becoming. I hope it feels like an inviting space for anyone who needs one.
Second—to a new project that’s grown quietly over time: The Art of Returning. It’s a 10-day guided journal I’ve created, filled with prompts, playlists, rituals, and small invitations to help you come home to yourself—especially during times of transition, heaviness, or disconnection.
I’ll be sharing pieces of that work here—reflections, seasonal rituals, music—woven in with whatever else wants to rise. It’s not a course. It’s not a plan. It’s a return, at your own pace, in your own time.
This isn’t my first time writing under the name Melmore Street. Years ago, I kept a blog by that name—just a space for personal reflections, creative processing, and a few honest dispatches from the life I was trying to make sense of. If you’re curious, it’s still there, a bit weathered but intact: melmorestreet.blogspot.com
And if you’re finding yourself in a quiet season—paused, uncertain, or just exhausted—I hope this night becomes a fairy night for you too.
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